Recording the MO8 to DAW - want multi-timbral parts on separate MIDI channels

[littlejohn]

Hi,
I tried doing a search and didn't hit this. If this is just so obvious then I apologize in advance.

I have my MO8 wired to DAW system (Cubase) via the USB cable. It works well. I can successfully record to MIDI tracks on Cubase, but all is going to one MIDI track. I'm sure this is totally reasonable but not what I want to do.

I would like to select a song or performance, play it, and have each of the multi-timbral voices arrive at the DAW on different MIDI tracks.

The manual has information on how to do this in reverse. ( i.e. send mutli-timbral from DAW to MO on separate tracks )
What is the secret ?

Does the question make sense ? If so, can it be done ? If so , How please !!
If there is a more appropriate sub-forum for this question, please advise.
thanks in advance.

--john

 

[Ted Nicoson]

John

From the wording of your post, I get the impression that you are somewhat new to the world of MIDI, so I have responded from that viewpoint. Please forgive if I have misread that:

"TRACKS" are INTERNAL to their own device. For instance, the MO8 sequencer will record data to its own "TRACKS" and Cubase will record data to its own "TRACKS", and so forth, and these "TRACKS" are analogous to the "TRACKS" in old tape transport systems. Now, when we send MIDI data between devices, say between the MO8 and Cubase, the communications medium is divided up into "CHANNELS" instead of "TRACKS". Typically it goes on a one-for-one basis. That is, the MO8 would transmit its Track-1 on Channel-1 and Cubase would receive Channel-1 into its Track-1, but you do not HAVE to do that. You CAN shuffle the order, if you want - say - Track-2-to-Channel-5-to-Track-7, but its usually best to try to keep it one-to-one as much as possible in order to keep everything straight. So, when it comes to sending recorded data from the MO8's sequencer to Cubase, you need to tell the MO8 which "TRACKS" to send on which "CHANNELS" and you need to tell Cubase which incoming "CHANNEL" to feed to which one of its "TRACKS". Most keyboard sequencers do their end for you. They usually default to a one-to-one TRACK-CHANNEL set up, but most DAW's default to receiving all incoming "CHANNELS" to "TRACK" 1, so that would need to be changed for each incoming channel. The current MIDI standard provides for only 16 "CHANNELS", and most keyboard sequencers are designed to match this with 16 "TRACKS" or "PARTS", although some high-end systems provide a MIDI-A and a MIDI-B with 16 "TRACK/CHANNELS" each, but most DAW software now offers anywhere from 16 to 32 to 48 to 64 or unlimited "TRACKS", so some TRACK/CHANNEL number shuffling with these systems is inevitable. The DAW software will show you on a track-by-track basis which "CHANNEL" each "TRACK" is tied to. You just need to know where to look for it and how to change it, as each DAW is a little different in that respect.

Now, when it comes to playing from the keybed directly into a DAW, the setup of the keyboard becomes a little more involved. If you are just playing a single (full keyboard part), you just set up the keyboard to send on CHANNEL-1 and tell your DAW which TRACK to record it to, but if you can 'SPLIT" the keyboard, the two sections become "PARTS", and you need to tell both the keyboard and the DAW what to do with the MIDI data for those two "PARTS". Normally you want to keep them separate, as they are going to use different tones in the sound module. So, for a one-to-one set up, you would need to tell the MO8 to transmit PART-1 (the right hand or upper data) on CHANNEL-1 and PART-2 (the left hand or lower data) on CHANNEL-2. Then you would need to tell Cubase to record the data to its TRACKS 1 and 2 respectively. From what you are describing, it sounds like this is the step that has not been done on your system. It sounds like Cubase is recording everything to (probably) TRACK-1. You need to check the section in your Cubase manual for assigning (tying) different TRACKS to different CHANNELS and how to ARM the TRACKS for recording. With an ARRANGER, it gets a lot more complicated, because there are UPPER, LAYER (or HARMONY), DRUM, BASS, and two or three CHORD (accompaniment) PARTS that all have to be accounted for and sent on the correct "CHANNELS" and received to the correct "TRACKS". If you are generating MIDI data to work with General MIDI (GM) compatible systems, TRACK-10 is reserved for the DRUMKIT voices and TRACK-16 is (optionally) reserved for PERCUSSIVE and SFX sounds.

AND . . . now that we have all of our TRACKS and CHANNELS sorted out, when we save MIDI data to a FILE on some type of storage media, we run into a new twist. If we save to a TYPE-0 MIDI file, all of the "TRACKS" data are saved to a SINGLE CHANNEL and when data from that file is read or played, the TRACK-TO-TRACK data is fanned back out just like it is supposed to be. If we save to a TYPE-1 MIDI file, then the "TRACKS" are saved to separate "CHANNELS" on a one to one basis, but this has NOTHING to do with how the MIDI data (TRACKS) is handled "WITHIN THE SEQUENCERS". I just bring it up here to explain the difference between the two types of FILES.

Hope this helps - Good luck !

 

[littlejohn]

Hi Ted,
Your response is very cool. I appreciate the detail. I am going to be working on this later this evening and will try to identify/locate the critical items you have brought to light. There are a lot of touch points on both ends. For sure I am going to bop over to the Steinberg Forum and try to get some advice. I read everything there was to read on the MIDI inputs and outputs. There is more information regarding the outputs. They sort of gloss over the inputs. Regarding establishing a MIDI channel for each Cubase MIDI track, the manual rather encourages you to select ALL MIDI INPUTS for each DAW channel. What you get to choose from if you DONT select that is very confusing. That is the focus of my trip over to the other forum. I might come back over here later tonight and attach some screen shots.
Again, thanks for the help. Lights are coming on , slowly.
--JOHN

 

[Ted Nicoson]

John

I wish I could be more help with Cubase, but I am a l - o - n -g time Cakewalk user. When I started with them, the company was called Twelve Tones and their sequencer was named "Cakewalk" and came on a 3 1/2 inch MS-DOS diskette. From there, I moved on to Home Studio, then various versions of Music Creator, and am now with Sonar-X1. I had Cubase AI-4 for a while that came with my Motif XS, but when I traded the XS in, I uninstalled AI-4 and dropped the CD back in the box with the XS. When I did try to use it and ran into the problems you are having, the incentive to relearn just was not there, since Sonar would do what I needed. Since you are using a Yamaha product, you might be able to get some help over on the motifator.com forum. That's where most of the Motif line gurus hang out. They can usually tell pretty quickly from experience whether a particular problem is with the keyboard or the DAW software and can even come up with a quick solution.

One thing you might want to consider - starting with a high-end DAW (Cubase, Sonar, Ableton, etc.) can be kind of like learning to ride a motorcycle on a fully loaded Goldwing. You could download one of the free sequencers and learn the basics on that. Once you learn how to do the A,B,C,D basics on a simpler system, it will be easier to learn how to do A,B,C,D in Cubase. I hate to think what it would be like to start from scratch on Sonar.

Good luck !

 

[Neurotech]

Sorry to jump in on an old thread, but I saw some info here related to my question and don't know where else to look. Is the MO8 compatible with the Reason DAW?

 

[SeaGtGruff]

I have no experience with either one of those, but I don't see why they shouldn't work together-- although I guess it might depend on what you mean by "compatible with." They should be able to pass MIDI and audio between each other as with any other keyboard and DAW.

But if you're specifically talking about whether the physical controls on the MO8 can be mapped to functions within Reason-- play, record, rewind, etc.-- it might depend on what MIDI messages the controls send and whether Reason will let you map them to its functions.

 

[SeaGtGruff]

By the way, with regard to the original discussion, the Cubase DAW records all 16 MIDI channels of a particular MIDI port to the same MIDI track, but the data is still separated on the 16 individual MIDI channels.

Cubase has a function that lets you "dissolve" the MIDI track to pull out the data for different MIDI channels and move the data to one or more other MIDI tracks. Thus, you could move each MIDI channel to its own MIDI track if you wanted, such as to make it easier to edit the data for each MIDI channel, or so you could output specific MIDI channels to different virtual instruments or external MIDI hardware, or for some other reason.

You can even dissolve the data for a specific MIDI channel to different MIDI tracks based on the MIDI Note values, such as if you want to separate the various sounds of a drum kit-- kick drum, snare drum, cymbal, etc.-- to their own tracks to make it easier to edit the drums part.

Other DAWs may or may not lump all 16 MIDI channels of a particular MIDI port together into a single MIDI track. I'm not familiar with Reason, so I don't know if it does or not.

But keep in mind that if it does, the information about which data is on which MIDI channel is still preserved, so even if it might look like everything got merged together to a single MIDI channel, that's not actually the case. It's like the difference between a type 1 MIDI file that has two or more "MTrk" chunks, each with one or more MIDI channels in it, and a type 0 MIDI file that has only one "MTrk" chunk, with all 16 MIDI channels in it.